2010-10-22 Cost of Government Commission Minutes

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the contracting process based on operations or understanding of not only in the finance, but outside, do they understand the process? Cause I know when I started, it took six months before I knew there was any training on the state program. There was any training on procurement. So, I didn’t want to ask for anything because I didn’t know how to ask for it. So, I’m wondering if because the county is transitional upon elections, and I know that your Finance is loosing eight people, is there problems in transition that could be addressed to prevent any problems in the contracting process or do you think that it sort of that’s the way it is? And it’s okay. MS. CRAWFORD: As Craig said, we have at the department head level, there is training. For the most part the departmental level when there is turn over like, I know an accountant comes in to work at Public Works, they do training. They’re doing their hands on training there although people sometimes whether it’s for procurement issues or processing invoices and some other accounting processes, our staff will meet with individuals. It’s not like we’re putting on formal classes but we’re meeting with individuals from different departments like new people who have been hired and need to learn the process. It’s done more the one-on-one kind of training. MR. BENEVIDES: And we get calls almost daily. We’ve told everybody throughout the county system that if you don’t understand what your next step is with procurement, call us. We’re always there. So we field many calls each day. I shouldn’t say many, maybe five or six a day where somebody is asking, hey what do I do next? So in that regard, we provide some guidance as well on a daily basis. MS. CRAWFORD: There’s a procurement handbook for county procurement that departments all have and is also available on our intranet website that people have access to. And similarly I think we have some documents where some of our accounting processing rules that are maintained. Each department has that as a form of guidance to someone who’s coming in cold. It’s not quite the same as having someone sit with you and work through it, but there’s some pretty good documentation on the steps to follow for procurement or what the rules are. MR. MASUDA: Our office does a Procurement 101 class, two times a year. And we do an advance class on Procurement Protest next week. MS. WONG: Okay. Good. Thank you. MS. PROVALENKO: Question, on professional services, is there, now I can imagine that some of the professional services are over the $25,000 amount. Is there bonding in place for that? MR. BENEVIDES: No. I mean again, you can ask for bonding on anything but it is not required. MR. MASUDA: It depends on the service. It’s really going to depend on what you’re really doing and whether they’re going to be consultants or they’re going to actually do the contract. 18